Held to Ransom: HOW POLICY FAILURE IS POISONING SRI LANKA'S POULTRY INDUSTRY, CONSUMERS

Industry representatives have raised warnings that without timely, adequate access to maize the industry cannot function The industry is being forced deeper into a market that is not just expensive, but dangerous With imports slashed, delayed and finally cancelled, there is nothing left to average against high cost of poor-quality local maize Once major exporters like India and Pakistan learn that Sri Lanka has issued import licences, prices there rise too

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For over a decade, Sri Lanka's poultry and livestock industry has sat across the table from successive governments, pleading for a rational, predictable maize import policy.

Since 2012, industry representatives have raised the same warning at every meeting: without timely, adequate access to maizethe single largest raw material in poultry feed, accounting for roughly 50% of every feed formulation-the industry cannot function, and consumers will pay the price.

Year after year, the response has been the same: half-measures, delays, and a policy environment that seems designed to squeeze the industry rather than support it.

This year, that failure has reached its worst point yet.

A tax that kept climbing

The Special Commodity Levy on imported maize tells its own story. It began at 10% -around Rs 3 per kilo. It was then raised to Rs 10, and later to Rs 25. Even at Rs 25, imported maize could be landed, duty paid, at around Rs 108 per kilo-against a local price of roughly Rs 145. That is a premium of nearly 40% for local maize over the imported, tax-paid alternative.

This year, the levy has been pushed up again-to Rs 50-while local maize now trades at Rs 167 to Rs 170 per kilo.

The industry is being forced deeper into a market that is not just expensive, but dangerous.

For years, even as local prices climbed, the industry absorbed much of this cost itself. By blending in the cheaper imported maize it was able to secure, it averaged out its raw material costs and kept egg and chicken prices affordable for the local consumer-effectively subsidising the market out of its own margins. That cushion is now gone. With imports slashed, delayed, and finally cancelled altogether, there is nothing left to average against the high cost of poor-quality local maize.